It's A Start

A short story by Phil Gillam

The invasion of our evidently not-so-secret patch of land was heralded by a flash of torchlight slicing through the darkness, and the words: “It’s all right, lads. It’s only us. Come to see how you’re getting on”. I had had encounters with people like this before and I was not exactly thrilled to see them.

It felt like it had already been dark for hours so it must have been about eight o’clock when our peace was shattered. It could only have been a couple of degrees above zero and I had just got myself tucked up and relatively cosy. Luckily, though, none of us had been asleep. We’d been chatting, exchanging disaster stories.

A small car park by day, our home by night, this place, between the higgledy-piggledy backs of buildings, sheltered us from the biting wind and gave us a degree of privacy. Sometimes it smelt like a strange mixture of stale pee and strong cider, but you got used to that.

It was now surprisingly well illuminated, this walled but roofless space, by the four torches and two fairly powerful lanterns carried by our philanthropic gate-crashers.

A woman’s voice, chirpy and bright, directed itself at me. “Hello there. We’ve come to offer you support. Some things to eat. Something to warm you up a bit. And we have useful information. Advice. That sort of thing. If you have any questions at all . . . ” Her sentence trailed off into the chilly November night. I looked up at her from my cardboard-box-bed, dazzled by her torchlight. And I could tell that she was taking it all in: the patch over the place my left eye used to be, the deep scar across my forehead, my matted hair. I knew I was not a pretty sight.

“You’ll be a Christian, no doubt,” I said.

“That’s not important now. We just want to help you if we can.”

They had descended upon us in our little den behind Poundstretcher and it felt to me like they were the ones who were doing the trespassing. Why couldn’t they just leave us alone? We weren’t hurting anyone. Our little band of ne’er-do-wells: James, 64, ex-Royal Navy, divorced three times, abandoned by his kids; Terry, 31, a bit of a druggy but an okay guy actually; and me.

“You’re new to this,” I said.

“How did you know?”

“Oh, you know. That impossibly cheerful disposition. That eagerness to help. That innocence. That patronising patter.”

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Don’t be,” I said, immediately realising I had upset her. “I’m being rude to you and you don’t deserve that. I’m the one who should apologise.”

She had arrived with three men, two of them solid and middle-aged, the third twig-like and spottily young. One of the older blokes had something bulky sticking out of the side-pocket of his jacket. I assumed it was a first aid kit.

I dragged myself up and out of my cardboard cocoon, pulled my coat tight around me, and leant up against the wall to be on some sort of an equal footing with my unsolicited benefactor. I looked at her properly for the first time. She was lovely. Eyes as big as oceans, hair wild as a thunderstorm. Her loveliness made me feel ashamed of my ugliness. We were about the same age, I reckoned. Who knows? – In another time, another place, we might have . . .

“Do you not have family to look after you?”

“It’s a long story,” I said.

“Just give me the edited hightlights,” she said.

She seemed like a genuinely caring person so I decided not to be such a tight-arse and to be pleasant for a change.

“Well, they used to say I was brainy. Intelligent. That I could really go places. And I believed them for a while. I was going to be a scientist, a high-flier.” I could see that she wasn’t quite sure if I was joking or not. “No really,” I said. “But I had a few problems. Dropped out of university. That was a mistake. Got my heart broken. Never really fulfilled my potential. Then a nasty motorcycle accident. Lost my eye. Hence the patch.”

“Very Johnny Depp,” she said. And then I could tell she thought she’d gone too far. She thought she’d offended me.

“That’s all right,” I told her, and I smiled at her. “I get a lot of pirate jokes.”

“You’ve had more than your fair share of bad luck,” she said.

At which point I decided not to tell her about my nervous breakdown and my psychotic episodes. I didn’t want her to think I was beyond all hope.

“Yeah. I suppose I have had a lot of bad luck,” I answered. “And then of course Paul McCartney let me down.”

“How’s that?” she asked. “Did his cheque bounce?”

I laughed and – through my laughter – said: “You’re the first good Samaritan to make me giggle. What have you got there in that bag of yours anyhow?”

She slipped the bag from her shoulder and unzipped it. “Mars bars to give you a sugar boost and Pot Noodles to warm you up. We have flasks of hot water and spoons if you fancy one now. We come around about once a week to keep an eye on you. Guys like you sleeping rough. People living in poverty, having trouble keeping things ticking over. We’ll say a prayer for you if you like.”

In my gentlest, friendliest tone, I said: “No. Don’t bother.”

“Anyway,” she said. “Tell me about you and Paul McCartney.”

“In the song, Winter Rose/Love Awake, he sings: ‘Snow falls in the winter, spring brings the rain.’

Before I could say another word, my goody-two-shoes interrupted by finishing the verse. “But it’s never too long before the summer comes again.”

“My God! How do you know that song?” I asked. “No-one else I know knows that song. We must be about the same age. How else would you know the words to a track from a lesser-known Wings album?”

“Lesser-known?” she said. “Back To The Egg, 1979. One of my all-time favourite albums. Don’t you give me that ‘lesser-known’ crap. It’s a brilliant record.”

I’ll tell you. I was really warming to this woman.

“And so Paul let you down in what way?” she asked.

“Well, I don’t think he is singing just about the changing seasons there. He’s really saying, don’t worry about all the snow and the rain. Eventually, you’re life will take a turn for the better and the summer will come again. Well, I’ll tell you. In my case, it’s been nothing but snow and rain. I haven’t seen the summer in a long, long time. So, as far as I’m concerned, McCartney let me down there – suggesting that things would all come right in the end. That’s not always the case.”

The three other goody-goodies seemed pre-occupied over in the other corner with James and Terry. From what I could gather, poor old James had pissed himself and the holy mob were trying to persuade him to go back to the church hall with them and change into some clean trousers that had been donated to their “good cause”.

I could see now that the bulky thing sticking out of the guy’s jacket pocket was not a first aid kit but a Bible. The old cynicism was rising in me again, but I stopped myself from saying something sarcastic. I stopped myself for her sake.

“By the way, you smell gorgeous,” I told her. “Fancy perfume? A little bit inappropriate given these circumstances, don’t you think?”

“It helps to mask the smell of the urine,” she said.

“Well, you shouldn’t keep pissing yourself,” I said.

She laughed and said: “Well, now we’re even. You’re the first homeless person to have made me laugh.”

Then, quite suddenly, and with all the audacity of a man with nothing left to lose, I asked her point blank: “Do you think you could ever love a man like me?”

She dug deep into her shoulder bag. “Here. Have a Mars bar,” she said.

“It’s a start,” I said.